This license gives users the right to reuse, repurpose and build upon a piece of work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creation. The license does not replace the copyright, which remains with the copyright holder. The change is effective immediately for all new articles submitted to the journal.

Professor Toyonobu Yoshida, Editor-in-Chief of STAM, said that “The introduction of this new license will help our authors to maximise the impact of their research and help build new and exciting collaborations between research groups. This will also help our authors meet the requirements of Funding Agencies and other organisations to publish under this license, particularly our European colleagues funded by the Horizon 2020 agreement.”

STAM is already one of the highest ranked gold open access journals in materials science and is celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2014. In 2008, NIMS took over the management of its peer review and financial systems, and IOP Publishing began co-publishing and hosting the journal. This partnership led to a continuous rise of the impact factor from 1.267 in 2008 to 3.752 in 2012.

STAM has also recently announced a new collaboration with the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa, Switzerland) for the editorial management of the journal and the opening of a new editorial office in in Switzerland, which will act as the journal’s editorial hub in Europe.